Federal prosecutors are asking a judge not to return the domain names of one …

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Federal prosecutors are asking a judge not to return the domain names of one of Spain’s most popular websites seized as part of a major US crackdown on Internet piracy. The legal filing over Rojadirecta.com represents the government’s first legal response to a lawsuit challenging “Operation in Our Sites.”

Commenced last year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has seized as many as 208 domains the authorities claim are linked to intellectual-property fraud. The court-ordered seizures are aimed at websites that sell counterfeited goods, as well as sites that facilitate illegal music, film and broadcast piracy.

“Returning the Rojadirecta domain names at this time would provide Puerto 80 with the very tools it used to commit the crimes the government has alleged it engaged in prior to the seizure,” (PDF) the government said in a legal filing Monday. “Accordingly, Puerto 80’s petition should be denied.”

Puerto 80, the Rojadirecta site owner, last month asked a New York judge to return them. The petition is believed to be the only legal challenge lodged against Operation in Our Sites.

Federal authorities are taking .com, .org. and .net domains under the same civil seizure law the government invokes to seize brick-and-mortar drug houses, bank accounts and other property tied to illegal activity. The government leaves behind messages to visitors that a site has been seized.

Puerto 80, which claims the Rojadirecta site sports 865,000 registered users, said it has committed no copyright infringement. The site claims it is a discussion board where members can talks sports, politics and other topics, and it additionally links to sports streams—some of which is pirated

“The government has not shown and cannot show that the site ever was used to commit a criminal act, much less that it will be in the future. By hosting discussion forums and linking to existing material on the internet, Puerto 80 is not committing copyright infringement, let alone criminal copyright infringement,” (PDF) according to the site’s legal filing last month.

Federal prosecutors in New York, where the government is handling Operation in Our Sites, do not agree with Puerto 80’s characterization of the site in question. The government said the site went beyond linking and affixed advertisements to the streams.

The government added that Rojadirecta was not authorized to broadcast the events.

“In addition, advertisements that were separate and distinct from any commercials that may have been aired during the stream of the sporting event broadcast were periodically displayed at the bottom of the video during the live stream,” the government said.

I find it simply astonishing that this somehow falls under the purview of Homeland Security.

More to the point, it find it offensive that this interrupts my access to the site (which I never tried to visit until today, and never will again) despite the fact that this action should only have any effect in the US.

So do I have this correct? You're in Puerto Rico or some other part of the world, then the U.S. government seizes your domain with no prior notice and without having to prove any violation in a court of law, and your only recourse is to hire a US lawyer and provide an affirmative defense, having already lost any presumption of innocence?

I find it simply astonishing that this somehow falls under the purview of Homeland Security.

More to the point, it find it offensive that this interrupts my access to the site (which I never tried to visit until today, and never will again) despite the fact that this action should only have any effect in the US.

Yes, the first search result is some IP address that I never did visit, but if I had to guess...

Where are you now? I think it's more of a "feature" of DNS that no one can access these domains once they're taken down from their registrar, as the US retains control over .com and .org TLDs. .es, on the other hand...

It is interesting that out of hundreds, only one site asked for their domain back. I don't know if that's an admission of guilt or just that the cost of fighting the system is higher than the cost of just moving on.

It is interesting that out of hundreds, only one site asked for their domain back. I don't know if that's an admission of guilt or just that the cost of fighting the system is higher than the cost of just moving on.

Keep in mind that many of these sites are not based in the US and according to Puerto 80 they had been in private negotiations with ICE to get their domain back. They claim that ICE was acting as though they were trying to reach an agreement but really just stalling and making it impossible to come to a resolution. Other plaintiff sites might be in a similar situation where they are trying to get domains back without the expense of going to court. Of course ICE has used this fact to trumpet that there have been no actual challenges of the seizures (because challenging them through non-lawsuit channels doesn't count in bureaucracyland).

So, when are we going to get some kind of P2P distributed DNS which pretty much blocks any action like this?

This seems like a good idea, and even fits with the basic principle of the Internet being decentralized. The concern I see is that I don't know how you deal with spoofing and domain stealing. How do you decide whose DNS table to believe when there are multiple different ones in this distributed network?

For instance, I might modify my DNS table to redirect microsoft.com to my own domain, and then distribute this to try and generate traffic from other peers that believe my table. This is clearly not the intent of a distributed DNS system, but I'm not sure how you avoid it. Do you have certificate authorities which certify the legitimacy of domain? This already exists and is done for other aspects of online traffic, so perhaps it would work. Ultimately, this would make the CAs the arbiters in the case of a domain dispute, though. Is this an improvement?

I guess my real question is: does the US government assert control over ICANN to seize the domains they take in this operation? ("Our Sites" is such a ludicrous name in so many ways...) The problem that doesn't seem to go away is that as long as you have "trusted" DNS sources, the government can do to them whatever they're doing in this case, and if you don't have trusted sources, you leave yourself vulnerable to spoofing, which can be for malware purposes much more malevolent than my previous example. I would love to see a solution to this issue, as I can't see one, and I'm not happy with the way the US government is handling this, even if the activities on those sites are illegal. (And I am a US citizen, born and raised, so please don't assume that everyone in the US supports this kind of thing!)

I don't understand how the USA can seize foreign property with due process?

This government will do anything it feels like until we the people take it back and we know that is not going to happen.

This government will do all it can do to force other countries even negotiating in secret such as ACTA this government's way of dealing with IP of big content.After all we should realize by now that both political parties would not want to lose the tens of millions that the MAFIAA is giving them.

This government will not respect the rights of others who are not citizens.It will in fact bully them,seize their domains,extradite them to US for crimes not committed in their own country like the guy from the UK who is about to be screwed by this government.

We the people need a new political party.We do not need teabaggers,reps,and dems.I feel if you want to change these fuckers we must all do our job to vote this corrupt system out the door.

We are all to blame for the shit you read about.We voted for these clowns to step on our civil rights and take our entitlements away.We voted for politicians who made war that still goes on now and sucks our budget away.

Next election I am not voting for one Rep or Dem.I am only one voice in millions but maybe before I die I will see the end of the Democrats and Republicans.They have sold us out and they can get away with screwing over the sites with .com or .org or .net

All sites in foreign countries should heed the warning and change your address to one not from USA.This government will do what it takes to protect their money lobbying buddies.US Laws will not matter.They will do it anyways.

It is interesting that out of hundreds, only one site asked for their domain back. I don't know if that's an admission of guilt or just that the cost of fighting the system is higher than the cost of just moving on.

Some (probably most) won't have the resources to challenge them in courts. They are probably going through thousands of paperworks, getting stalled in every possible way while they try to pretend that this is actually working.

A huge pat on the back to Mozilla for standing up to the goons (heck, even a non-gay hug!), pity they did not mention the people who actually made the add-on

Dirac wrote:

Where are you now? I think it's more of a "feature" of DNS that no one can access these domains once they're taken down from their registrar, as the US retains control over .com and .org TLDs.

In most cases, but if you use the MAFIAAFire Redirector, that is not the case. It redirects to the correct place/rightful owners/correct site no matter what the goons at ICE/DHS think or want.

Wes Felter wrote:

It is interesting that out of hundreds, only one site asked for their domain back. I don't know if that's an admission of guilt or just that the cost of fighting the system is higher than the cost of just moving on.

More than one has "asked" for their domain/s back (for example torrent-finder.com) but were stalled and made to run around in circles. This is the first one to actually take the trouble to file suit "in a foreign land".

When we spoke to Rojadirecta about linking to us, they replied as it may not be a good idea as they though it their talks with the US govt. was going well (!) and did not want to jeopardize that. I guess they went for option B...Good luck to them!

I don't understand how the USA can seize foreign property with due process?

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States of America. Just like American Samoa, Guam, Wake Island and various other islands in the Pacific.

.com, .org or .net and .us are all considered US domains. Have something else and they have no right to hijack it. Of course the fact that they think they have the right to do so in the first place is just apple retarded.

.com, .org or .net and .us are all considered US domains. Have something else and they have no right to hijack it. Of course the fact that they think they have the right to do so in the first place is just apple retarded.

That's fine for .us, but doing it for the others is going to create a political backlash in the international community.

Regardless of who technically "owns" the .com TLD, the reality is there are many non-US companies who rely on their .com domain name, and those companies should not be required to observe US law, nor should they be required to go to a court case in the US to defend themselves in such a case.

Hurting a business in some other country, without solid proof that they're doing anything illegal, is a serious issue. This court case should have happened *before* the domain was seized, not several months after their site went down.

It'll be interesting to see how the international community reacts, once they've had a chance to think it over.

Well, this is just ammunition that ICANN should give all TLD to non US companies. If the US can't play nice, they need a time out. See how our law makers like it when we don't have control of anything any more because we are corrupt.

As for voting, thats a scam. Unless its been changed recently, the electorial college still picks the President. How do you think Bush won the first election? He did NOT win by popular vote.

Trust me, the cost of trying to fight these assholes FAR outstrips the ability of 99.999% of the world's population to pay. AUSA's absolutely count on you not being able to mount an effective legal defense. If you have the money to do so, you are far less likely to be indicted in the U.S. than if you are perceived as "low hanging fruit", in which case the AUSA responsible for the indictment can count you as another notch on their belt, which in turn counts toward making the next pay grade during their yearly performance review. Of course, that sort of behavior is clearly forbidden in published federal ethical guidelines covering federal prosecutions, so it almost NEVER happens.

Remember, too, that, in the U.S., you are remanded to custody, sometimes for YEARS, BEFORE you are convicted of any crime. Something similar occurs when the federalists steal...er, I mean confiscate personal property. They come roaring in, guns drawn, dicks hard, ready to shoot anyone and anything that even looks at them funny; steal....er, confiscate (damn) your belongings, and then those things taken are no longer yours. Good luck getting your property back, even if you are found innocent. Which is, of course, exceedingly unlikely in the U.S. federal prosecutorial venue. 97% of all federal felony cases are adjudicated by plea bargain BEFORE trial. As a federal defendant, you are brow-beat, threatened, wheedled, cajoled and bamboozled into taking whatever crappy deal they wave in front you (and that's just the "public defender", a defense atty by no stretch of the imagination).

And in this country, taking your chances with a jury of your "peers" is generally no better (at best) than the plea deal in the first place. You get 12 uneducated, bigoted, judgmental, hypocritical house fraus on your jury, and brother you are truly screwed. Which means, you are truly screwed.

The U.S. comprises 5% of total world population. It contains 25% of the world's prisoners. Land of the free my ass. You see a surprisingly small number of top 1%'ers in that lot, of course. Lots and lots of blacks, latinos, poor white trash (all poor folks in general). Here's hoping someday soon the bottom 99% can set aside their petty (generally racist) differences, and wake up to the real threat - the power elite. By definition we outnumber them 99 to 1. Let's press that advantage to the sticking place.

.com, .org or .net and .us are all considered US domains. Have something else and they have no right to hijack it. Of course the fact that they think they have the right to do so in the first place is just apple retarded.

That's fine for .us, but doing it for the others is going to create a political backlash in the international community.

Regardless of who technically "owns" the .com TLD, the reality is there are many non-US companies who rely on their .com domain name, and those companies should not be required to observe US law, nor should they be required to go to a court case in the US to defend themselves in such a case.

Hurting a business in some other country, without solid proof that they're doing anything illegal, is a serious issue. This court case should have happened *before* the domain was seized, not several months after their site went down.

It'll be interesting to see how the international community reacts, once they've had a chance to think it over.

Probably the most interesting reaction would be for other countries to apply this in reverse. For instance, usury (as in, lending money for an interest) is illegal, per Chariah, in many Muslim countries. I think they should seize the assets of all US banks in those countries...Alas, the amount the US is spending in military equipment frightens these countries enough that they are not going to do it.Ironically, our only hope for true human rights in this country may be the only other country that is not afraid: China.

Well, this is just ammunition that ICANN should give all TLD to non US companies. If the US can't play nice, they need a time out. See how our law makers like it when we don't have control of anything any more because we are corrupt.

As for voting, thats a scam. Unless its been changed recently, the electorial college still picks the President. How do you think Bush won the first election? He did NOT win by popular vote.

Here for all those nostalgic. And watching it again and how Bush got into office now makes much more sense.

Well, I've just gotten home from work, and my brain is pretty much fried, but how about this for a straw man?

Instead of/in addition to an entry in a TLD name server, you get a digital certificate with an expiration date equivalent to the number of years you've paid for, and otherwise irrevocable. Your digital certificate contains your domain name and the IP addresses of *your* name servers. It migrates to many P2P name servers and can be validated with the signing registrar's public key.

Revoking the signing key would invalidate a bazillion or so domain names, and so could not be done lightly.

The sticking point? Your own name servers have to have stable IP addresses for years. Can we do that with IPv6?

Or, maybe your (digitally signed) domain name certificate *names* you somehow (other than by a DNS name) and your own certificate contains the IP addresses of your name servers.

And yet countless really nasty malware domains, including highly skilled spearphish/APT/etc domains that are beating the shit out of the govt even as I type this stay around until they expire from disuse.

But no we can't have some fake prada handbag domain stay up, thats public enemy #1

I've seen hard-core criminals, drug addicts. Veryone of these criminal I've in contacted with have some senses to it. They aren't all that bad even with their ugly past. There is this "terrorist" (No kidding, long story short, there's this guy I ran into in our center, as he told me, a drug addict and while he was under the influence of drug, who've threaten the hotel he lived with a pipe bomb. Now homeless.) is a better human than this government dog, who made the first decision to seized this domain.

This guy must be a cruel motherfucker who's over-weighted, live alone ugly piece of sh*t.

Our government is a good government. It's just it got f*cked-up by this type of dogs.

So do I have this correct? You're in Puerto Rico or some other part of the world, then the U.S. government seizes your domain with no prior notice and without having to prove any violation in a court of law, and your only recourse is to hire a US lawyer and provide an affirmative defense, having already lost any presumption of innocence?

If that's right, it's crazy.

Seriously WTF, but apparently they're doing the worst crime in the whole world (according to the USA), linking to illegal redistributed media. The USA is so f*cked, steal a CD in a record store, get a slap on the wrist, steal a CD on the internet, pay a million dollars.

I don't understand how the USA can seize foreign property with due process?

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States of America. Just like American Samoa, Guam, Wake Island and various other islands in the Pacific.

They even seized Torrent-Finder.com whose owner is an Egyptian, in Egypt... last I checked thats not in the US

I also believe this company is from Spain. The company is Puerto80 but I don't see Puerto Rico anywhere in the article

Yes, Rojadirecta is a Spanish operated site registered in the US. The site was found legal in Spain, twice no less.

Here's another perspective from Techdirt:

We've already covered how Puerto 80, the company that runs Rojadirecta, has challenged the government's seizure of its domain. The arguments presented by the company focused on a few different aspects of the law, and, obviously, focused mainly on what's most likely to get the domain returned. That meant that, while it mentioned both, it didn't spend too much time on two larger issues associated with the Rojadirecta seizures: (1) that it appears to violate the First Amendment's ban on "prior restraint" of speech and (2) that Rojadirecta was declared legal (twice) in Spain, and ignoring that sets a dangerous precedent.

This guy must be a cruel motherfucker who's over-weighted, live alone ugly piece of sh*t.

On the contrary. The decision makers are probably meticulously manicured, well "sculpted" (by surgeons), lives with a super-model level boy/girl toys in very expensive mansion from all the "campaign donation" they received from the lobbyists.

I don't understand how the USA can seize foreign property with due process?

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States of America. Just like American Samoa, Guam, Wake Island and various other islands in the Pacific.

.com, .org or .net and .us are all considered US domains. Have something else and they have no right to hijack it. Of course the fact that they think they have the right to do so in the first place is just apple retarded.

The government added that Rojadirecta was not authorized to broadcast the events.

Awesome. It wasn't. You lose. Next.

Never been to the website so I can't say for sure but by the sounds of this article, they never broadcasted those events themselves. The forum posters posted links to other sites which hosted the material.

With the "intellectual property" people (aka RIAA/MPAA/(god knows who else) in control of the DOJ, the government feels it has a perfect right to squash domains belonging to anyone in the world, just as the military believes it has a perfect right to attack any country in the world.

The U.s. fully believes it has the power to tell the rest of the world what to do.

The government added that Rojadirecta was not authorized to broadcast the events.

Awesome. It wasn't. You lose. Next.

Never been to the website so I can't say for sure but by the sounds of this article, they never broadcasted those events themselves. The forum posters posted links to other sites which hosted the material.